


A Shadow's Little Light (2009)

by Jazzy_B_Real (Otherwise_Uncolonized), Otherwise_Uncolonized



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (Video Games)
Genre: 2000s, Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Androids, Angst and Tragedy, Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Asexuality, Assassination Attempt(s), Banter, Battle, Betrayal, Blood and Gore, Canon - Video Game, Character Development, Childhood Trauma, Coping, Dementia, Demiromantic, Denial of Feelings, Depression, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Drama, Emotional Baggage, Emotionally Repressed, Empathy, Eventual Romance, F/M, Falling In Love, Family Loss, Fights, Fist Fights, Flashbacks, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hearing Voices, Hedgehogs, Hurt/Comfort, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Impersonation, Internal Conflict, Introspection, Kidnapping, Loss, Loss of Innocence, Love Triangles, Manipulation, Misunderstandings, Morbid, Moving In Together, Moving On, Non-Consensual Kissing, Not Beta Read, POV Alternating, Past Relationship(s), Personal Growth, Platonic Romance, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Rare Fandoms, Rare Pairings, Romance, Schizophrenia, Self-Denial, Self-Discovery, Shame, Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Teamwork, Tension, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unrequited Crush, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-04 02:11:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11545287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Otherwise_Uncolonized/pseuds/Jazzy_B_Real, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Otherwise_Uncolonized/pseuds/Otherwise_Uncolonized
Summary: ╾━╤デ╦Mankind will never forget how Shadow the Hedgehog saved Earth. Two years after his death, this was proven to be mankind's lie, and Sonic is the one outraged. On the day that Amy Rose finds Shadow's carcass, they're all forced to embark on a journey of soul-searching, ARK diaries, and bloodshed."Who are we anymore?"





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Metamorphiac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metamorphiac/gifts).



> *There's actually a reason why this is being published here, but it would be so crazy if anyone remembers this. I was way too young yet somehow a much better writer in some areas. Anyway, many of the songs tagged here are symphonies; few aren't. Comments are chocolate fondue, the fic's only diet! 
> 
> 2009 Author's Note: _The author does not own the cast of SonicTeam, but the author does own their mental maladies. The writing tone is marinated in dark themes, so heavy flanderizations of the characters are at work here to execute that ploy. Timeline launches off from Sonic Adventure 2's platform!_

[Hurt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFUPIuHayRo) [by Lucas King](LYRICS%20URL) 3:43

[Code by Layouttesst](http://layouttesst.livejournal.com/profile)

* * *

ARK.

It was all but a memory bobbing against the surface of Amy's brain like a bottle cap in a river. Her mind swam back to recognizable scenes and mawkish dialogue wet with tragedy, only docking on main events from an era long gone:

― _"Can you both hear me? The ARK is close to the Earth! Please hurry up!"_

_"As a child, I looked up to my grandfather because of all the great things he accomplished in his life. He was my hero, and I wanted to be a great scientist like him. But...did he really mean to destroy us?"_

_"I don't know...but what I do know is, we all did it together!"_

_"Sonic? What's taking you so long? If you don't get here soon, she WILL die!"_

_"Just letting Knuckles pilot the ship over here was more dangerous than you could ever be!"_

_"It's all going according to plan; there's no reason for me to help them..."_

_"There has to be!"_

_"...Do you really think...that the professor created Shadow to carry out the revenge on all those who live there, on Earth?"_

_"What's the matter, Sonic?"_

_"Oh, it's nothing. Come on! Let's go home! To the planet as cool and blue as me!"―_

For two years,  _Space Colony Ark_  had been just another star on Orion's belt, and like an artifact lost to history, it was a star that no one looked at. As she turned her ear away from the old monodies of what was echoing, she blended in with ebullient citizens who were unsullied, unrazed, and unaffected by the glimmer of her adventure on the Milky Way. Her eyes were for  _others_  stars ― stars that raced against the sun with red sneakers. Her heart was for  _other_  matters ― matters that involved romantic dates in [_One if by Land, Two if by Sea_](http://www.oneifbyland.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/one-if-by-land-two-if-by-sea-1024x731.jpg). Her brain was for  _other_  memories ― memories that blurred out tragic sagas to buttress the rainbows in her brain.

She'd never thought of herself as any kind of ~~murderer~~ hero when she already had a hero to do her saving. And her hero, alas, hadn't been seen in nearly two years, but it didn't stop her from seeing his color. She saw blue in the sky when she looked up, blue in the ocean when she looked down,  _{oh, how ironic; he hates the water, but it's as cool and blue as him!},_  and blue on the magazines rocking a thumb's up. She missed his blueness to tears and sighs; she missed it to death and insanity!

A month before his disappearance, he would talk less, stare more, rescue off time, and disappear all the time. He had stopped acting impatient and started acting  _indifferent_. An alter ego had encapsulated Sonic then ― an entity with some kind of  _bipolar depression_ that made him bluer than fur could get. When he finally returned to her district as blue as never before, it was reflex that made her want to crush him into a hug until his ribs cracked. Yet when she saw him, and he saw her, she had no desire to smother him in lip-glossed kisses and sobbing hugs.

Sonic's eyes didn't "wink with a twink," as she had once petnamed their green personality. They were these unsmiling, stale types of jade...well,  _things_  to look at! And instead of giving her a wave, his lips contorted into this upside down smirk. She rubbed her ankle with her toe in angst before looking down at her feet. This was not the type of blueness she had wanted to see. This was not _his_ blue.

Nevertheless, to the train station they went, having agreed to see Tails together months ago. She spoke and he mumbled.

_{...S—Sonic...}_

She walked and he staggered.

_{Sonic...}_

She hated brushing shoulders with him.

_{Sonic...!}_

She hated it when he didn't look at her.

_{SONIC!}_

And she hated wondering if he hated her.

_{Where **are** you, Sonic?!}_

Vaguely she knew that he was falling apart in some way. Vaguely she knew he was out of touch. With today, tomorrow, next week. Forever.

 _{My goodness, **no!** Not_ _forever! Please don't let it be forever! **Sonic**!}_

When they took a train into  _Mystic Ruins_ , he murmured _"Pathetic_ _"_ with a foul breath as he watched the city's gray towers morph into the jungle's green trees.

That recognizable quote was used by only one hedgehog, but he was the hedgehog whom Sonic was now becoming. 

And she hated it.


	2. The Premature Heroine

* * *

 

 

 

 

[Suicide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpgmkVGjGfQ) [by Lucas King](LYRICS%20URL) 3:56

[Code by Layouttesst](http://layouttesst.livejournal.com/profile)

* * *

"Sonnnic! Oh, Sooonic~!"

A blue dash-mark zigzags between the trees, taking their green hair with it.

"Sonic? SONIC! This is getting a little OLD don't you think,  _Sonic_?"

...Old.  
... _Old!_  
Old was  _good._  
Old was  _normal._

Taking this perk into account, the flavor in the following lines have never tasted sweeter to their sayer: "Darn! Why does he always have to play so hard to get?" Amy Rose drummed her foot against the soil. "Not to mention leaving a poor, defenseless girl like me all alone in a place like this!"

And then, suddenly — _oh! just beyond the trees!_  

She blinked her antenna-like eyelashes and squealed, "Sonic!" Her feet took off.

The pink hedgehog had been chasing zaps and zips of blue through the Mystic Ruins like a kindergartner, but her purpose wasn't to hammer him in the dome until he agreed to take her paw in marriage. She planned on kicking Sonic back into the habit of being Sonic, which would only work by reminding him of the part he was supposed to play in her presence. Amy promised herself that she would dress him in Sonic's skin at all costs — and then,  _maybe later,_  discuss which restaurant to dine in. _'Should it be Blue Hill or Faith & Flower?'_

Ha, no matter! She'd have loads of time to think about it later because her current mission was taking longer than expected! To think that Sonic had sworn an hour ago that all he needed to shake his blue funk was a few laps around the rainforest, at that! He was such a brat sometimes! She'd be lying if she said that she was unhappy about him acting so in-Sonic, though.

"Slow down, SONIC! Y'know I can't run as fast as you can!" Amy huffed and puffed, still grinning under her sweat's heavy weight as she hightailed after Sonic. She was going to complete her mission and bring "Sonic" back once and for all. "Ready or not, here I COME!"

A chill ran all the way up to his quills. Amy swung out her Piko Piko Hammer and slammed its massive head against the dirt to launch herself into a high jump.

The shadow above Sonic began to triple in size. As it blocked out the sun completely, he looked up and saw a laughing, hysterical Amy with her arms and legs spread out like a flying squirrel. "WAHOA!" he blurted. 

The two rolled down the road in a tumbleweed of squeals and hollers. Their bodies — well, _Sonic's_ body — crashed face-first into a tree's stomach, shaking three coconuts from its pinnate leaves. The hairy fruit missed Sonic's skull, but Sonic's muzzle slid down the trunk until his chin dropped into a puddle of _yuck_. He surfaced from the mud and spat out its putrid flavor.

Sonic's catcher, who clung onto his back like a monkey on its mother's, nuzzled his head of spikes and sang, "I got you now, my darrrling _Sonic_!" For some reason, she was hoping that this _rosy_ catchphrase would lead to some cute roundabout of banter and bicker, but her ears heard not one groan or stutter. 

No, what Sonic did instead was very un-Sonic. He robotically stood up like he had no soul at all, causing Amy to slip off his back and land on her rump. 

"Ow! That _hurt_!" Amy nursed her bottom with a weep before attacking him with a scolding, "What's your  _problem_?!"

The anti-Sonic caricature didn't budge. 

"I said, "What's your problem?!"" Amy's temper jumped in front of her fear. A text box glowing with her mission assignment flashed in her head to reunite her with her original strategy. She swapped out her attitude for a better one. "What's _wrong_ with you, _Sonic_? Loosen  _up_ and have some _fun_!" She playfully catapulted mud at his back, which was another battle technique to mask her consternation.

The gunk leaked down her victim's back and thighs. Amy paused in mid-throw when all she got from him was silence.

Birds catcalled.

Squirrels tutted.

"Sonic?" she baaed.

"...You should go back home now, Amy." His un-Sonic voice was raggedy like a tattered electrical wire that had been chewed through by a puppy. "I'm not good for you to be around anymore."

All her funning deserted her face. "Sonic?" Tears arrived. "What're you... _what're_ you _saying_?"

The hedgehog's posture slackened, his blue suddenly lighter than it had been a second ago. His ears became droopy looking, too. The voice that spoke next was Sonic's soft timbre, "It's just..." He looked down, turning his head. He crushed his limp fingers into a fist. "I just need a little more _time_..." 

Amy heaved herself off the ground in a frenzy that almost made her stumble. She hurried after him, hands asking for his embrace, eyes pleading for his submission, heart begging for his friendship. "B-But you've HAD time! You've been away from us for _months_! How much more time do you _need_?!"

"... _Amy_..."

"Sonic!" Amy puled. 

"...You don't  _understand_ ," he gently insisted.

"I  _do_ understand!" Amy cried for her Sonic and not this one.

Sonic opened his hands and looked between them. "You don't—... _I_ don't even—...Augh!" He shook his head before holding it. 

"Oh, Sonic! It'll be alright, Sonic! See?" She crept closer to him and touched his shuddering shoulders, smiling in tearful understanding, oblivious to the tendons that tightened under her touch. She looked around his arm to look at his face. "Nothing will hurt you as long as I have something to say about it! You just need to tell me what's wrong; _then_ we can start figuring out how to make you feel like yourself again! And we'll do it  _together_ —"

Sonic rounded on her. "Amy, you don't  _get it_!"

Amy's gasp was a choke. Under the shade of the tree, Sonic's eyes were blood-red, his fur was blue-black, and his molars looked like fangs. 

"..." Speechless with no rational explanation to buffer her, Amy backed up until she had tripped over her own sandals. She doubled over and rolled onto her side, cowering in her hero's shadow. "S-Sonic? SONIC!"

The fanged monster vanished in a flash. In its place stood a traumatized Sonic the Hedgehog. He looked at his palms, head rocking from side to side, and then looked blindly at her. "... _Amy..._ " 

The Sonic before Amy wasn't breathing right. It was like he was scared to be in his own body, and that scared the pink hedgehog even more. He came over to her and showered her in apologies, but she smacked his hands away.

"Keep your hands to yourself, Sonic!" Amy shook her head, pressing her eyes shut. Two tears raced each other to her chin.

Sonic looked at her like an abused chihuahua. "Amy, I'm _sorry_ , I...!"

"You can eat your apology!"

His feet stopped in their tracks as a cloud umbrellaed them, darkening his body. "...Amy..."

"What else do you hafta say for yourself?!"

"...I need you,"—Sonic's open palm, the shaky palm he had lent for her to take, changed into a gesture for her to back away from him—"and everyone else, to just  _stay away_  from me."

Amy retaliated with sadness, "But you were already alone before you got here! And now that you're back, you can't even talk to me! I've spent all my time kissing the ground the Sonic  _I_ knew walked on—"

" _Exactly_ , Amy!" His pitch went higher. "You've spent all your time kissing up to this "one-hero glory" stuff like you're part of some sheeple after the hero no one even had a memorial for died on our watch! You've been skipping like a goat in your own little dreamworld like you don't even care, like it never happened, like the whole world just woke up one day and forgot about.. _.everything_! I'm not even the hedgehog who—..." Sonic turned away and grabbed his temples, tossing his head as he unleashed a baritone that was torn between a beast's and a child's, " _I_ couldn't  _save_ someone for the first time in my whole life..." 

"..." Amy's balled hand covered her mouth. More tears surfaced from her eyes as his own fell down his. She dragged her feet forward, reaching for him with compassion. "Sonic, this isn't you—"

" _Don't._ " He held his left hand out, crooked fingers digging into his forehead. The pain in his face softened into grief as he partly opened his moist eyelids. "Go back to your _life_ , Amy. Chase a _real_ dream...because Sonic can't be your life anymore after you realize he's not as perfect as you cracked him up to be..."

Amy's pupils seemed to get smaller and smaller after every word he panted. Without a glance, her lovable hero bent his knees and bulleted out of sight.

"Sonic..." Amy sat on her knees as a tear wiggled down her cheek. It hung on her chin before bouncing off her bracelet with a soft _ping_. Selective outrage tampered with her memory of what he had shouted, motivating Amy to squeeze the mud in her fingers and hop onto her feet. "FINE, then!" She cried to him as he wandered far out, tears still biting at her eyes. "Y...you...OOOH, you...!"

No answer.

"Go right ahead, _Sonic_! Run away from your problems, because running away is what you do best!" She kicked up a stone and broke down the opposite road. The pink hedgehog had no sense of time or location as she knifed through the trees with self-victimization keeping her guilt at bay. As more and more trees zoomed past her, Amy Rose saw the road darken.

Twilight draped the Mystic Ruins, creeping along the jungle with eerie shadows. Amy wounded down to pant in front of a creek. The break gave her mind fissures of clarity.

_"Run away from your problems, because running away is what you do best!"_

"That was wrong of me, wasn't it?" Amy's whisper quavered in her strangled throat. She watched the waterworks gush up, shoot out, pour down. Her hands hovered in front of her cheeks to catch tears. "I should've tried harder to listen to him." She dug her face into her palms to hide it from the world, ears flattening against her head as she bawled. "Oh, _Sonic!_ "

A crack of thunder made her ear spring up. As if she had chanted a spell in elven, down came a barrage of raindrops. Amy blinked in disbelief as gallons of water soaked her to the bone. She inhaled to ululate, "Why is this happening to me?!"

Lightning arced across the clouds.

Amy's arms umbrellaed her head as she screamed. She hunted for an exit that would hopefully take her to Tails's workshop, but a hair-raising thought killed her momentum.  _'But what about Sonic?!'_  She clasped her hands together and looked over her shoulder worriedly. _'I can't just leave him out here like this—"_

A thunderbolt torched the tree that had been sheltering Amy.

The hedgehog dodged its flaming branch by falling onto a bed of moss. In tears again, she closed her eyes and flew into another direction, howling Sonic's name. Hoots and caterwauls mutated into wicked laughter all around her. Evil eyes filled the trees. 

"Why is this happening?!" Amy panted. "Why is this—?! BUH?!" Amy's toe tripped over a vine on the footpath. Her sob caught in her throat as the world catapulted into slow motion.

Time sped up and her face skidded against the ground. Growling, she slammed her palms down and pulled her face out of the mud. Just as she had finished smudging mire across her muzzle, wind blew her hair sideways, making the pink strands straddle her eyes.

The draft faded and her quills swung back down into their original position, giving her the opportunity to blink at the gap of missing earth in front of her.  _'Is that...a meteor crater?'_ her mental Wikipedia identified. _'What's something like that doing here?' _The puzzled girl peeked inside of the chasm. 

Lightning lit the dark. Her pupil was sucked back into her iris. There, lying in cakes of mud, glistened a black ball of fur. The lightning flickered out and the image was lost in the darkness.

"H-Hoof!" Amy covered her mouth.

The ebony quills, which were crowned with vermilion streaks and overgrown ferns, and the rusted air-blades, which were covered in dirt and animal feces, belonged to _him_. 

"But it...it _can't_ be! That's impossible!" Amy cried. "Isn't it?" She waited for the lightning to light the sky again. When it did, the power of her denial changed the figure's anatomy. The creature below favored more of an anteater with blood streaks on it, granting her mind permission to run with the illusion. 

"See?! Look! It's _not_ him, so just snap  _out of it_ , Amy!" She wobbled up onto her feet and gulped as she squeezed the hem of her shorts. "The lightning was just playing tricks on you!"

Even if it wasn't, she didn't want to see _his_ dead body. She didn't want to remember how she had pressed her fingertips against the glass of the space shuttle to reflect on _his_ death for less than twenty minutes. She tried to close her eyes and just leave it all behind, but her slippery sandal made her slide down the hole's muddy walls without her consent. She screamed and tumbled until her body was left sprawled out in front of the corpse. Amy sat up, hugging her cold chest while rain drowned her cheese-thin clothing to the point where it looked as transparent as plastic.

The girl had no choice but to lift her head and see the truth lying a foot away from her beyond a wall of tears. Roots, mushrooms, mold, and even moss had grown on and under his body, shackling his limbs to keep him as a prisoner of the earth.

"It...it  _is_  him...!"

The glare that had always been there  _—_ the cleft between his eyebrows with the red highlights in the arches of his lids — sculpted his expression into one of eternal hatred.

" _Shadow_!" Amy knew it to be so a long time ago, but saying his name out loud made her feel less woozy. The frightened pink hedgehog edged near the ancient carcass. "Shadow?" She reached out to touch him to see if he was alive, but she was too afraid to find out. Animals that looked dead were known to spring to life in  _Lifetime_ movies. "Sh—Shadow?" Amy stressed the syllables of his name, trying to will him awake without having to grope for a pulse. "Oh Shadow, y-you're..."

Alive.

Shadow the Hedgehog was alive.

_"You've spent all your time kissing up to this "one-hero glory" stuff like you're part of some sheeple after the hero no one even had a memorial for died on our watch!"_

Amy gasped at the echo of Sonic's shout. "Sonic!" 

_"You've been skipping like a goat in your own little dreamworld like you don't even care!"_

Another gush of tears stung her eyes. She had blocked Shadow the Hedgehog out of her mind for two years. Tails, Knuckles, Rouge, and even Eggman avoided topics about ARK. The lack of dialogue helped the world feel like the galatic episode had never happened. It appeared to her now that Sonic was the one who had suffered the most from the event.

Amy's eyes widened. 

It was Sonic who averted his eyes and balled his hands into fists when the G.U.N. Commander thanked him for saving their world and ridding them of the Professor's "weapons." Even those who had thanked Sonic without badmouthing Shadow ignored the black hedgehog's fallen alliance. Worse still, Sonic knew that Shadow would not have fallen if it weren't for Amy Rose. Amy's now shaking fingers hovered over Shadow's forehead. 

Sonic had been the one hurting — the one resenting her because she was...

_"—skipping like a goat in your own little dreamworld like you don't even care!"_

Her chin trembled.

Was she truly this one-dimensional?

_"....Like it never happened, like the whole world just woke up one day and forgot about...everything!"_

Amy stared at the black hedgehog's face, inhaling it all in, trying to imagine Sonic's pain, trying to feel it and make it her own, but she could only think one selfish thought:  _'You're the reason Sonic hates me.'_ A teardrop fell from her nose and patted Shadow's quill. 

Red eyes flunked open.

Amy wheezed. She was going to die. She was sure of it — sure of it the moment she felt his eyes impale hers. The Lord of Hades materialized from the earth as the shadows of his horned quills engulfed her face like a crown of damnation. His eyes blazed with inferno, and his molars glinted like sabers in their hateful grit.

Rain rolled off Amy's flapping eyelashes. "...Sh...Shadow..." 

Shadow's eyes enlarged. All of a sudden, the black hedgehog crumbled to the ground.

"Shadow!" Amy yelped in distress.

With unsteady elbows, the curled hedgehog raised his body off the patch of broken mushrooms before keeling over in pain again. "Gruh!"

Amy, for the third time, gulped down her fear and dived in to help, but he recoiled. Right then and there, Amy did not see him as a murderous somebody. She saw him as a frightened anybody.

"Who... _are_  you?" The hedgehog's raspy voice demanded. His eyes were half-open. " _What_  do you  _want_ with me _?_  ... **SPEAK.** "

Amy cowered from the ringing in her ears. "I—It's...it's me: Amy!" she bleated. "Don't you remember me? You promised me that you'd save the planet!"

For a moment, Shadow's eyes cleared, almost scintillating with recognition, but in the next, they clapped shut. "M-Mm...!" His hand snaked around his chest to clutch his white bib.

Amy moved her attention away from his face and brought it down to his glove. "Shadow, you're hurt! You hafta let me _help_ you—"

Before he could reply, Shadow collapsed.

"Shadow!" Amy came forth and rolled him over, watching in horror as the trembling Shadow shriveled up into a ball.

The black hedgehog moaned without opening his mouth while he held his chest, most likely loath to express the depth of his pain. Amy shook and shook and shook him, baaing his name until she could baa no more. Shadow drifted into another coma despite her wails.

Stunned, Amy cautiously touched his soaked chest, stroking through the knotted mats of fur and moss to feel burn marks. She shook her head, grunting. "Get a  _hold_  of yourself, Amy! Shadow needs your help right now, so get your butt into gear and get him out of here!" She nodded to herself after balling her hand. 

Amy used the thickest lianas she could find to tether their bodies together. She tested the durability of the liana that was dangling from the crater's rooftop and got to climbing. "Oi, Shadow," Amy huffed. "You're heavier than you  _look_!" With Shadow slung over her back, she scaled the wall until her fingers could grip the jungle's grassy floor. She scrambled onto the road and looked around for a log cabin.

The cabin she spotted was hidden under a canopy of vines and branches, but she still prayed to whatever God was up there that someone would offer them a night's stay. _'Maybe it's Big's place!'_ "Don't you worry, Shadow! I'll do my best to keep us both from harm!" She dashed towards her destination with Shadow's body bouncing on her back. "I'm making a promise to you just like you made a promise to  _me—_ " 

Thunderbolts struck the trail Amy was jogging on. She scurried under a palm's tree fallen leaf and pulled it over their bodies, whimpering. Once the lightning shower ended, the path was cleared for her again. Amy ran up the cabin's porch steps and knocked on the door. She wiped her runny nose and heaved Shadow's body onto her back to keep him from sliding off. "Almost there, Shadow! Just hang on a little longer!" 

After ten minutes, she was still on the porch, so she knocked again. "Hello?! Anybody in there?!"

There wasn't even a creak inside the cabin to imply that someone was coming to the door.

The diabolic eyes watching Amy from the jungle killed her will to keep her nerves under control. "Somebody, PLEASE! Hurry up and open this door right this minute!" She shivered from the bipolar mix of Shadow's hot breath warming her neck and the cold weather freezing her skin. "I need help! _Please_ HELP me!" Her knees started bending; Shadow was getting heavier.

"Anybody!" Amy flattened herself against the door to express her desperation as she sobbed and banged on the wood. "S—Shadow needs  _help_!"

But no one was coming for her or Shadow. Not even Sonic.

"Arrrrgh, is ANYBODY —  _HOME_?!" She hammered and hammered on the door with her fist before using her foot to kick at it.

The door flew wide open at the demand of her sandal. She stood in bemusement before her bemused mind remembered Shadow's condition. Amy waddled into the cabin and evaluated the space. It had one room, three windows, no furniture, firewood, a fireplace with a chimney cap, and an okay ceiling. By looking at the number of roaches and mice that were hiding in odd places, it was plain to see that no one had vacationed there in months.

Even though she was scared and disgusted, Amy knew she would have to make the best of it. She assessed the moth-eaten blankets hanging from a coat rack. _'Hopefully they'll work for the both of us.'_ She shook out a blanket and laid Shadow down with extra caution, whose wet fur was forming a rumpled spot on the fabric. Amy massaged her thumbs into his shoulders all the way down to his forearms to knead some heat into his body.

Shadow's body had temperature now, but it was colder than metal under a pile of snow.

"I have to find a way to keep Shadow alive!" she warned herself, glaring at her thumbs as they went to work. The pink hedgehog swiped the sweat on her brow with her wrist. She had no knowledge of whether or not an artificial entity was immune to infections, but she wasn't going to risk it. Amy bit her lip as Shadow exhaled fogs of white from his nostrils.

Every breath appeared to hurt him.

Amy looked outside, then looked back at Shadow. She leaned over him to say softly, "Don't worry, Shadow. You can count on me." Amy left his side and ran over to the fireplace.

The pink heroine had to make sure her firewood was ridden of moisture before starting a small fire with dry kindling. Then she added logs to the pit. She dragged Shadow toward the fireplace by the armpits, which helped her discover muscles she never knew she had. Amy folded her legs into their calves as she watched Shadow from behind the flickering orange wall between them. Shadow's eyelids, muzzle, and forehead glowed with the firelight; his beige lips were curled into a down-pointing arrow.

It was worth noting that Shadow didn't look scary to Amy anymore. He looked — and Amy's eyes gentled with the realization of this — helpless. She crushed her legs against her chest with her arms. The embers of the fire filled her eyes, turning them into burning emeralds. Those burning emeralds were soon glazed over by tears.

Amy dropped her face against her knees, crying.  _'What do I do now, Sonic?'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *The lovely artwork is by [aimyneko.](http://aimyneko.deviantart.com/art/defeat-669470043)
> 
> 2009 Author's Note:
> 
> —* The point behind Sonic's flanderization -- at least to Amy -- is that old blue has been slowly mutating into "Shadow." Remember how people thought Shadow was Sonic physically? This, to Amy, is the reverse, but to an emotional extent. The cause, she believes? Losing a potential friend whom he could not save for once and being exposed to death.
> 
> In my eyes, I too wouldn't think it makes sense for Sonic's shiny world to not be affected by such a jolt. For this, Amy interprets it as mild psychopathy. He's not seeking sustenance from his companions. He's disconnected and wants to be away. He's going through what Shadow went through after he lost Maria, she feels, since it was implied that Shadow had been "perfect and pure" before his own trauma struck.
> 
> She always sees Sonic so well put together with his feelings, even in the worst circumstances, so some severe trauma at the horror of being the only one who saw a friend die - one he couldn't save -- has thrown everyone for a tailspin. Such is partially like the route that was taken for Fleetway Sonic when he lost his bunny comrade, because he became the same person who is written here.
> 
> Anyway, I was one of those earlier willows when this shipping first came around the bin, so it's obviously not too fresh when it comes to scenario. I was probably one of the first to write this goofy, "Amy gets lost in the jungle/finds Shadow's body" plot. After that, several may have mimicked it, but enjoy.


	3. The Damsel in Distress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artwork by [aimyneko.](http://aimyneko.deviantart.com/art/Do-you-still-love-him-459479944) Shadow calls Amy by her first name in here [because that's what he (rather softly) called her in his SA2 recap of the promise scene. "Thanks to Amy," is what he says at 2:16 in this video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq5EvhOMTQY) Therefore, Rose is not going to be used. He paid attention to what Eggman called her after the bear hug, which is interesting in itself.

* * *

 [Lands](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoZ12HUZjws) [by Gem Club](LYRICS%20URL) 5:01

[Code by Layouttesst](http://layouttesst.livejournal.com/profile)

* * *

_Lub…dub._

**[[[Fluid blubbling inside a test tube]]]**

_…Lub―dub._

_"Do what you dreamed, Shadow…(Shadow…)"_

_…Lub―dub._

**[[[Fingers drawing hearts on the glass's fog]]]**

_"Do it for me…"_

**[[[Surgery table;[liquid in a plastic bag](https://www.healthcare-informatics.com/sites/healthcare-informatics.com/files/u489/IVBag_14868863_SMALLER.jpg); wires; scalpels; [forceps](https://www.wpiinc.com/clientuploads/directory/products/501243.jpg); heart-lung machine; [bag valve mask](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=0ahUKEwj79di5sOXVAhUP4WMKHey8CVoQjBwIBA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fgcegroup.com%2Ffiles%2Fimages%2FProduct%2520Images%2FMEDICAL%2FBVM%2FBag_valve_mask.jpg&psig=AFQjCNHlbDxtRE9uaeqVFoWQc2wvyP0cYA&ust=1503303596932912); liver glistening on a slimy tray]]]**

_"For all the people (people…)…of that planet…(planet)"_

_Lub―dub._

_Lub―dub._

**[[[Blinding high-beams; masked faces; flashing glasses; white coats; mutters; syringe-nosed robots]]]**

_"(Do what you dreamed…dreamed…) Shadow… (Please, Shadow…Shadow…) give them a chance… (do it for me…)"_

_Lub―dub, Lub―dub, Lub―dub._

_"(For all the people…) Sayonara… (…of that planet) Shadow... (give them a chance…) the hedgehog… (to be…)"_

**[[[Vaccine injections; multiplying blood cells; spiraling DNA bridge; heart rate monitor beeping; GAAASP―――**

Black eyelids leaped open. Pupils dilated as a flood of oxygen was sucked in. A groan could be heard from somewhere and everywhere as the racket echoed far and wide. It wasn't until consciousness fully returned that Shadow the Hedgehog realized the groan was his.

He stopped breathing.

It was _his._

Seizuring, Shadow lifted his shredded gloves. He wiggled blurry white digits that were contoured by a yellow, warm glow. "Where...where _am_ I?" he rasped. Using his weak elbows as crutches, Shadow peeled his back off the ground to behold the log cabin before him. "Where _is_ this place?"

_**"Shadow, give them a chance, to be happy..."** _

Shadow flinched. His microscopic pupils pulsated with light. "Maria __?"

The voice changed from Maria's whisper to a high-pitched shriek that made his ears fold back,  _"Shadow (Shadow!)! I beg you!"_

As if a wailing ghost had flung itself across the room, the " _I beg you"_ came from the right of him. Shadow's eyes wildly followed the voice's relocation. What they landed on was a conked out female hedgehog sleeping on the floor. Her ungloved hands pillowed her head for comfort as her breath filtered through the "o" that her lips formed. The calcified mud grouting her legs, staining her bangs, and browning her flimsy clothes made her unrecognizable.  

"Wait..." Memories invaded his limbic system. "…It's  _you_."

_"They're basically good if they never give up on their wishes! They always have a reason to be happy! That's why you should help them out!"_

Shadow closed his eyes and raised his hand to knead his thoughts. "That pink hedgehog..." As his hand fell back down to his side, the anthropoid glared at the bright world framed by the window. Sunlight bled through the glass like strands of angel hair. 

"Earth," Shadow estimated upon deeper retrospection, surprised by his own discovery. "This is...where I've _fallen_." He tilted his chin down to reexplore the burnt valleys in his palms. _'So then,'_ ―Shadow curled his fingers― _'I really am alive, after all.'_ A frown percolated.  _'But, for how long?'_ His gaze backtracked to the window. _'How long have I been here? And how did I _—_ _...'__

Pre-recorded sound bites from hours ago replayed in his mind:

_"Who...are you? What do you want with me? ...SPEAK."_

_"I—It's...it's me: Amy! Don't you remember me? You promised me that you'd save the planet!"_

Shadow's gleaming eyes dimmed in vibrancy as they lowered to his skates, troubled and preoccupied by what he now knew. He shifted his attention to the pink hedgehog. ""Amy."" His caramel lips shaped the syllables of her name like they were parts of a foreign language he had yet to learn.

Amy's paler lips lifted into a smile. She turned her face against her wrist with her shoulder hugging her cheek. "I  _knew_  you'd come back for me, my darling hero."

Shadow's chest absorbed another shock. Hardening from the jolt, he averted his gaze and closed his eyes.  _'I have already fulfilled my promise,'_  —his eyes opened halfway _—'and yet it seems that I am once again indebted to the pink hedgehog.'_ He didn't smile about it. The survivor was in no position to be signing an "I-owe-you," especially since he couldn't feel his Chaos Emerald's palpitations _._

"But why do you keep leaving me  _behind_?" 

"Hm?" His curiosity darted back to Amy.

The wrinkles on her snout were rucked up by a sneer. "Son- _nic,_ " she sobbed. "Don't _go_! Puh-lease _stay_!"

 _'..."Sonic."'_  Shadow observed her from the corner of his widening eye. _'That blue hedgehog.'_ He rewatched a flashback of Sonic reaching out for his hand as he fell to Earth like a puppet without strings. Sonic's face was full of fear while his was full of peace.  _Eternal_ peace.

**_—Plink-plink_ _—_ **

Shadow's ear twitched at the music. He unglued his hand from his temple to find the source. _Rain_. It seemed that the sun had been sucked back into the clouds, and now downpour was  _plinking_  against the windowpane. The shadows of raindrops danced across Amy's body. Wind picked up with a whirling sound outside, and soon little stems of lightning were turning the window white.

Shadow protected his vision with the shade of his paw. The fingers in the other drew into a fist.

**_—CRASH_ _—_ **

A tree flew past the window before making the ground shake with its collapse.

Shadow grunted. "I've had enough of just sitting  _around_." He used all of his might to pull his body up and stabilize his knocking knees. "I have to find that  _Chaos_  Emerald." His knee gave out, forcing him back down onto his palm. " _Damn_  it..." Shadow cracked his eyes open with a growl, suddenly feeling like his body and mind were sinking into a pool of quicksand. "This can't be _happening_..." 

 **_—" S_** _h_ **_a_ ** _d_ **_o_ ** _w_ **_...!"_ **

"..." Sweat sped down Shadow's forehead as he froze. The voice was Maria's sigh enlaced with Amy's trill. He looked down at the pink hedgehog who had gone blue in the face from the freezing cold. 

**_"...Do it for me..."_ **

His heart pounded. _'Maria!'_

_"I gotta go now! I have to keep my promise to Maria! ... And you."_

Shadow pressed the heel of his fist against his forehead. He could neither battle the storm nor leave the pink hedgehog to die in the wilderness. He was enchained.

 _"Shadow!"_ Amy's twelve year old plea echoed. _"I beg you!"_

He shuddered, head sinking. His deference for Amy not only hinged on a family promise that he had allowed her to inherit, but her own act of kindness. It would have been equally hypocritical of him to be the reason for any small girl's death after what happened to his sister, most of all one he'd passed Maria's heirloom onto. He couldn't have Amy's corpse on his conscience. He couldn't become the manifestation of what he was so hatefully against...not _again_...

_'Not ever.'_

He had to be better than _them_...

**_"...That's the reason why you were brought into this world…"_ **

...Shadow's eyelids unveiled his ruby eyes. _'But Maria, why was I brought back into it...? Have I not granted you all that you wished for?'_

Amy sneezed, blowing his thoughts away. He reached for an unfolded blanket with one hand and slid it over her back, holding her shoulder. Powerless to his own nausea, Shadow's vision was curtained by a world of darkness once more...

....

_'Maria...'_

....

....

_**"Let (him) live for (his) dreams...(dreams)..."** _

...

...

...Amy blinked her eyes open to rub them raw with the back of her wrist. "Huh?" She focused on the mice staring back at her. The pink hedgehog rose from the blanket on her shoulders, rubbing one side of her head. "What was _that_ all about...?" She rested her hands on her lap and blubbered, "What a terrible _nightmare_ I had...I almost thought it was...REAL?!" Amy stilled upon seeing the spectacle beside her.

Lying on its back was a figure with its hands folded on top of its bosom like a vampire in a coffin.

Amy was a breath away from crying out in horror, but then a rodeo of dark images jogged her memory.  _'Oh, it's Shadow!'_ She held her cheeks, shaking her head twice before gaping at him.

Shadow's chest floated up and down as he breathed like a normal hedgehog.

Amy patted her heart, sighing.  _'Whew!'_ She opened her eyes to appreciate his willpower. _'_ _It looks like he made it, after all! Thank GOOD-ness!'_

Shadow still sported the same grimace from before. His smirk hadn't softened its downwards arrow, and his brow line was furrowed with discontentment. 

Amy convinced herself to believe that the right thing to do was to check for auditory nerve damage. "Shadow?" she called, fists under her chin. It was too much of a chore to bring her voice any higher. 

His black ear rolled into her direction, and then those intimidating eyes of his sprang open.

Amy's gasp was loud enough to make his pupils shoot over to hers. "Um..." Shoulder turned toward him, she blinked with her clasped hands pressed against her chest. "…Do you...feel any  _better_ , Shadow?"

Shadow stared at her for far longer than what she was okay with. He made sitting up look painful as he rolled onto his arm to prop himself up with one elbow and a palm. "Hardly," he confessed under a hoarse breath, but then nicks of pride seemed to deepen his voice as he said, "but I'll _survive_." 

Her acquaintance talked like a shadow: low, soft-spoken, and nearly inaudible. It was a voice that Amy wasn't used to. Sonic's voice was flamboyant and fun, easy to samba with and always inviting, but Shadow's honey-tongued murmurs ― with their faint yet breathy English accent ― was marooned and distant, embodying a remote island that you couldn't set foot on. 

Drawing her eyebrows together, Amy tried to smile at the loner. "Well,  _that's_  a relief." She held her chest and sighed again. "I thought you were a goner for _good_."

Shadow's tall ears straightened at the comment. Amy noticed that his ears were longer than hers. The temptation to pet one made her mentally bop herself on the noggin.

He looked down at his left hand for some reason, allowing her to only see his cheek. "Because I am an artificial lifeform," he murmured, "I am immune to illnesses."

Shadow's decision to speak had caught Amy off guard. "Are you one hundred percent sure about that?" She leaned forward with her paws kissing the ground between her knees. "You almost wouldn't stop hyperventilating! I was so afraid for you!"

His ears rounded to her again, eyes following suit. She didn't breathe in the same way that he didn't blink. Talking to Shadow the Hedgehog was such a bizarre phenomenon. Their voices just weren't in harmony, but she had a feeling that he too didn't know how to interact with her.

Shadow broke their gazes after breaking the suspense with, "It must have been my system's reaction to being inactive for so long."

"Oh." Amy leaned back, frowning. "I guess that would make sense."

"Exactly how long has it been?" His bass was weak and craggy ― perhaps due to the fact that he hadn't used his chords for two years.

"Huh?" Amy scratched her cheek, tilting her head. "How long has what been? You mean how long have we been trapped in this cabin, or how long were you hyperventilating?"

"How long has it  _been_ , since the publication of my so-called death?" Shadow asked louder, better at speaking once his own embarrassment over how he feeble he sounded had become agitation. 

"Oh.  _That_..." Amy watched her fingers score ice-skater spins in the pile of soot on the floor. " _Well._.." 

Shadow waited patiently.

"It's...been two whole years since..." ―she looked away to buy more time for thinking up a better phrase than what she was thinking of―"your victory against the Biolizard. I found you inside of this giant meteor crater in the Mystic Ruins, which is a rainforest that's a pretty long ways off from Station Square and Central City." Amy glanced at the window worriedly. "I've been waiting for the storm to die down so that I could get us both out of here, see...but it's been raging like that forever..." 

The glimmer in his eyes disturbed her because it was difficult to decipher the emotion behind it. "I see now." He frowned at his naked wrist. "And my power ring.. _.where is it_?" 

"Sonic saved it, but then he gave it to Rouge, and then Rouge had to give it to G.U.N."

At the mention of that name, Shadow's heart blackened. _'Those pathetic pests,'_ his black look seemed to say.

Amy fidgeted while he dealt with the darkness within himself. A second party's off-putting temperament never discouraged Amy Rose of all chatter-boxes to pause at the end of a period, but for all Shadow's taciturnity, his air was thicker than butter. _'Or maybe cement is a better description.'_ She didn't fear him because of it like she had on Prison Island, that much was certain; he had been oh so kind enough to promise her that he would save the world at the expense of his own life.

Though she liked him for that, she was still feeling out of place with him like a dumb guppy, and she couldn't explain why. He was hardly any different from Mr. Robot, and deep down, she wanted to tell him how much it meant to her that he was alive; how sorry she was for not crying; how bad she felt for not making a memorial for him...

 _' You should've been the one to do it out of everyone, because you're the one he promised to save the whole world for. You're the reason why he did it, the reason why he...' _Her eyes were pushing back a familiar wetness that she hated to her very core. Amy jumped when she realized that the dark hedgehog had not liberated her from his gaze.

"S―Stop staring at me like that. It's  _rude_ to stare, you know!" The decision to chide him was an impulse rather than an intention. She had been feeling emotionally weakened by her guilt, and responded to it with her own barriers. 

The trademark cleft between Shadow's eyebrows sank deeper, making the frown more of a scowl. He closed his eyes, slewed his head away, and stood up, managing to cross his arms like the Shadow she once knew.

Amy's heart broke a little. She couldn't quite cotton on why he was walking away from her. _'Because you scolded him, you big dummy! That's why Sonic wouldn't even stick around!'_ She focused on Shadow's back. _'But Shadow's the one you have to make things right with for now. You have to tell him how you feel, how Sonic feels. Show him that he means what he's supposed to mean―'_

Shadow's left heel didn't touch the floor when he got to the sixth step. One cough after another expectorated out of him without warning, causing him to cover his mouth with the back of his fist and hunch over. His calves trembled.

"Shadow!" Amy got up, torn between staying and leaving. "Are you _alright,_ Shadow?" She gathered the courage to walk toward him. Her palm hesitantly went to his arm, but Shadow spun away from Amy and groped the wall for support instead.

Amy's hand dropped off his shoulder like a tear. Her body tensed with each  _smat_  of bloody mucus that hit the floor. The hemming and hawing slowed in time, but Shadow continued to harrumph and pant, putting her on edge. She quietly waited for him to recover. 

Shadow finally stood erect after a short spell. "I'm _fine_..." Only the thunderstorm destroying the jungle behind the window had the privilege of seeing his expression now.

Amy squeezed the end of her shirt, then lowered her head sadly. He obviously didn't want to be in the same room with her. He wanted her to be gone and―

"...Amy."

Amy flinched, fresh tears springing off the corners of her eyes. "H-Huh?"

Shadow's head turned some, facing his shoulder, but he didn't glance back at her. "...You carried me here in this weather, didn't you?" he whispered.

Amy tilted her head at the way he said it. "Of course I did, Silly." She smiled gingerly. "How else could I have gotten you all the way here? You were pretty heavy, too," she inserted.

Shadow the Hedgehog glanced back at her from over the bank of his shoulder. Amy was on her toes as she held the bottom of her shorts, hoping he'd say something else so she could talk more and be herself again. His eye seemed to regard her and perhaps even the companionship that she craved, but in ten seconds flat, he returned his gaze to the outside world where rain squiggled down the window. Amy rubbed her big toe with the toenail on her opposite foot. 

"Thank you."

She lifted her head, quills rocking. "Wha?"

Shadow looked down, then off to the side again, quills swaying. He expanded upon his gratitude softly, "For helping me, like you did once before."

Amy brightened up. She gave him a very Sonic-like answer: "No  _problem_. That's what heroes are _supposed_ to do, right? Help people when they're in need!" Saving someone freshened up her self-esteem just like when she had saved Birdie and Gamma. Now was the time to shed her guilt: "And I was so glad that I _found_ you, I―..." She stopped babbling when she felt his strong energy block her. It was an unconscious block made by the mere action of him plunging into his deep, caliginous thoughts.

"...Heroes." Shadow raised his open palm to look at it. "Hmph." The sound was sad and cynical. 

Amy's shoulders and ears sank. Nothing more was asked or said by her damsel in distress. Regardless of his appreciation, Shadow felt like he was galaxies away from her, lost in a quasar of limbo and melancholy.  _'I know he's unhappy about his power ring falling into G.U.N.'s hands, but why isn't he at least happy to be alive? Is he upset that I saved him?'_  She wanted him to talk to her about his frame of mind. "Shadow?"

Shadow didn't budge, but she could see him bending his fingers into his palm.

"What's the matter, Shadow?" 

He looked at his right foot and not at her, crossing his arms. "It is no concern of yours." 

She cringed in mortification at the rejection. Amy bumped her back against the wall and stared at her muddy toes, seeing tears again. She didn't want to be in the same room with him anymore. She didn't want to be stuck in Mystic Ruins. She didn't want to be ignored anymore.

She just wanted to go home because at least the lonely walls of her apartment wanted her. Amy's hands made small fists against the wall. "Why're you both like that?" 

Shadow's scalp of kicked-up quills still faced her.

...Amy sagged down the wall until her backside hit the floor. "Please talk back," she whimpered, on the edge of her sanity.

"..." Shadow wouldn't turn his head.

She squeezed her arms around her legs. "Please don't be Sonic." Amy squinted out two floods of tears. "Anything but _Sonic_." Her body began shaking uncontrollably. "I don't want to be left behind again." She raised her head.

And then suddenly, it was Sonic standing behind the curtain of tears  ― the blue dream and the blue nightmare ― with his back rejecting her and the rest of the world.

"...Sonic? Sonic!" Amy dragged her feet across the floor in the lazy walk of a zombie, her hands lifting and willing out to him, her fingers shaking to touch him and  _warm_  him and  _love_  him, and...and...and... _'Oh, Sonic!'_

Sonic's head moved by the slightest inch. That's when Amy did what she did best: she jumped onto him, arms desperately locking around his waist, and smothered her face against his blue fur. His back muscles locked in tight until his body felt rock-hard against her soft one.

"Oh, _Sonic_!" Amy rubbed his back with her forehead and her tears, flattening her bangs against her headband. "Let me in so I can help! I just want―"

Sonic's hand snatched her wrist, prying her moist palm off his stomach.

"..." Amy quailed. She peeled her damp cheek off Sonic's spine to look up over his two spikes.

Sonic did not shrug or shove her off. He moved his eye over his shoulder to look down at her with an iris that blazed like a bonfire. That same eye wasn't green. It was...

Amy's gasp betrayed her terror. She keened and whined as she backed away from the black hedgehog. The tears were on a rampage down her horrified face. Shadow the Hedgehog continued staring at her over his shoulder with that one eye. Amy stumbled into a dark corner until the shadows ate her up, sliding down onto her rump.

The preteen covered her face to shield herself from her shame. "It's all _your_ fault that Sonic's the way he is! This is all...all your...all my fault..." Like a baby without its parents, Amy sobbed with an open mouth.

During all of this, Shadow did not speak. He only watched Amy Rose wilt. She sniveled and sank into the floor until she had managed to sink into a lake of dreams about rainbows and blue hedgehogs with red stripes. A red-eyed rat slithered across her leg while she slept in blissful ignorance. Right before it nipped her ear, Shadow stomped his foot down and crushed the critter with a sick  _ **crack**_ , uncaring of the blood that exploded under his foot. He slid the dead body away from Amy with his foot still in its intestines, dropping a tattered blanket over the pink hedgehog's shoulders.

Shadow loomed over her form like the  _Grim Reaper_  standing over one's bedside. He narrowed his red eyes in the darkness before edging away from the girl and meeting the window once more. "It's my fault for surviving," he whispered, "and your mistake for having brought me here."

* * *

Back in the Mystic Ruins, hard pats were  _tatting_  against the window of Tails's shop. Sonic the Hedgehog stared out of it with his chin in his palm as his foot tapped on the floorboards at a maddening speed. He glowered at the reflection of the dark hedgehog who glowered back at him.

Tails stopped screwing the screws into the back of his Chaos Emerald radar. He lifted his goggles. "Sonic?" The fox blinked. "Hey, Sonic!" His eyebrows curled inwards. "Are you feeling okay over there?"

Sonic didn't budge. It was like he had been hypnotized by his own reflection.

Tails chewed the side of his cheek. "Sonic?" He approached the best friend who had alienated him for months. The fox's tails danced like snakes as he stood behind the hedgehog.

Sonic looked over his beige shoulder as the lightning flashed in the window. His idol's eye seemed to regard him and perhaps even the companionship that he craved, but in ten seconds flat, he returned his gaze to the outside world, where the rain squiggled down the glass. 

Tails's pluck weakened. His ears sagged with his eyelids. "Sonic," he moaned, trying to control his tear ducts. "Who _are_ you?"

The electricity went out, scaring Tails. Sonic's fur went all black, but the lamplight swinging outside touched his quills with a dull red light. Sonic had transformed into that other hedgehog ― the black and red chimera who wore only one cloth of emotion on his face...

Tails shook his head in denial of what he was seeing. Just as he was about to backpedal, the lights flickered back on. The blue was back and the black was gone.

"…I'm just thinking a lot about Amy, that's all," Sonic voiced from what seemed like the bottom of a canyon. 

 _'"That's all?"'_ Tails's inner voice mocked. His eyes were tingling again. _"That's all?"'_ No, _"Sorry, pal,"_ just, _"that's all."_

"I'm worried about her."

"....You're worried about Amy?" Tails parroted, blinking away his tears. "Did...something  _happen_ to her?" 

"...No, something happened to  _me_ ," Sonic threw back with his best grunt, standing up.  "Whatever's _in_ me...."―his fists trembled―"...I need to get it out." He cold-shouldered the window and powerwalked into the center of the lab, pacing in circles as his hands animated the story. "I was watching it happen but I couldn't put a  _stop_ to it. I couldn't yell; I couldn't move; I couldn't do anything!'" His throat virtually caved in on itself.  

Tails was getting dizzy from watching Sonic march to and fro, but his concern outranked his daze in importance. "Sonic, what're you  _talking_  about? I don't under―"

" _Don't_ you get it?!" Sonic stopped pacing to jab himself in the chest with his thumb."I hurt her  _feelings_ , Tails!"

Tails hopped back, startled by his passion. Because a shadow darkened one side of Sonic's face, one eye looked red while the other looked green.

"And  _you_  know how Amy is..." Sonic's beige and black eyelids lowered a little as he frowned at his fist. "She's probably so upset that she didn't even..." He grunted again. The hero swiped at the air and got into action mode. "What am I even doing here?! I gotta go after her―"

"Sonic!" Tails held his hands up. "You  _can't_  go after her now!" He pointed to the ceiling. "I know you're Sonic, but those lightning bolts could strike you at any given moment! Do you know how many people die per year by lightning strikes?"

Sonic turned away, snorting like a pig and shutting his eyes angrily. "Gee, thanks for the relief,  _Tails._ "

"What I'm  _saying_  is that Amy's smart. She would've gotten aboard the train right away."

Sonic's ears hung lower. His fingers rolled open. "I sure hope you're right, little buddy...I _sure_  hope you're  _right_...."

 _"Little buddy,"_  had a nice, familiar ring to it, one that brought a smile to Tails's sheeny eyes. The sparkles in them stopped twinkling when he suddenly reconsidered his own report. " _Wait_  a _second_..."

Sonic's ears popped up. He frowned back at Tails. "What'd you mean,  _'wait a second?'_ "

Tails got nervous. 

Sonic faced him. "Something you wanna tell me, little buddy?"

"Um..." Tails's ears lowered this time. "...Weren't the...station workers having some type of strike at noon?"

"... **TAILS**!"

"It slipped my mind!" Tails shrieked. 

 

 


	4. Uprooting Roots

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...I added a scene(s) that I had no business adding. It's just that I'm watching SA cutscenes and....my heart got stuck in my throat, haha. Unfortunately, my meddling made the original chapter far longer than it was, so I had to cut it in half. I did try to blend it in with the 2009 writing tone, but I can tell that my current tone seeped into it. Furthermore, I do hope you're hearing **David Humphrey instead of Jason Griffith** when Shadow's parts come up.
> 
> David gives Shadow such a mild-mannered disposition that fits his introversion; Jason Griffith makes every word drip with grumpiness even when Shadow is expressing sentimentality. David is silky; Jason is gruff. Me no like. **SA2 Shadow** is the **only** Shadow I acknowledge both in canon and vocally, the one with a full range of vibratos in that violin David calls his voice. ;) I like Lisa Ortiz as Amy, though; she made her sound so pleasant in Sonic 06, so that's the voice I was using in here.

 

* * *

 

 [Sadness](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9dh6l2PTZs) [by Sonic Adventure](LYRICS%20URL) 5:01

[Code by Layouttesst](http://layouttesst.livejournal.com/profile)

* * *

**_"(Shadow) Shadow…look, Shadow (Shadow)..."_ **

_Treetops spin in a circle as sun rays blink off the top of Maria's hair. She smiles lovingly under the yellow halo, curls hanging over her ears. " **Is it everything you dreamed it would be, Shadow (Shadow).…?"**_

"...Maria..." Shadow pulled his eyelids apart at first to blink tearfully at the ceiling, then to look past the intertwined fingers on his chest and over the scarred air shoes that faced the entrance. His lost purity recaptured the best of him when he saw sunshine swimming through the door's wooden slats. He adjusted his sore body into a sitting position.

Amy Rose's muggy breath touched his fingertips to remind him that her body was clinging to his fur like leather. The artificial lifeform succeeded in shedding her latex-grip as carefully as his hands would allow. He rose to his feet with a stumble to the left and a stumble to the right. Refraining from glancing down at the girl below him, he hobbled into the nave of sunbeams with his hand in front of his eyes.

_**"(Do what you dreamed…dreamed…) Shadow..."** _

Shadow opened the door and let heaven in, removing his palm to consume Maria's Kingdom Come.

_**"Do it for me…"** _

The rainforest was teeming with green and gold. Shadow lowered his arm completely, eyes coming alive. As a testament to his inner reawakening, the soles of his shoes guided his body from tree branch to branch, touring him around the nirvana. The Earth was so young, so untouched, so pure. It unsettled him.

Shadow backflipped off a tree's limb and landed in a dell that stood across from a waterfall, holding his unhealed chest. He pantingly scanned the vale in search of an ambush. Peace was a lie with a warm smile, after all. The ambush Shadow ended up shielding himself from was led by butterflies bursting forth from a parasol of ferns. They pirouetted around his head before winging into the heavens above.

Stunned, he looked earthwards to watch grass blades drip with the last of the rainstorm's pearls. Miles and miles of buds blossomed across the valley's emerald smile as sunlight pulled back the curtain of darkness. The anthropoid stood rigidly, a lone shadow in the bosom of Earth's halo, feeling out of place and perfectly in it. After glancing from here to there to confirm that no one was eavesdropping, Shadow let his eyelids drop onto his cheeks. He tilted his chin up and welcomed a kiss from the breeze; its humid breath slipped through his quills with the warmth of Maria's fingers, peeling back his defenses like snakeskin falling into a heap around his ankles.

The ultimate lifeform had never appreciated standing in an open field of  _peace_  last year. Despite his misgiving towards being alive (and therefore, purposeless), he was a blank music sheet ready to be written on by Earth's composer in this moment.

Colorful birds perched themselves in a kapok tree behind him.  _"Good morning! Good morning!_ _The storm is gone! The storm is gone! All is well! The storm is gone!"_ they choired. 

 _'Bird songs,'_  Shadow recalled, mind still adrift in its own lagoon. ' _You said you wanted to see the birds sing one day. Didn't you, Maria?'_

_―"I wonder if birds look as happy as they sound whenever they sing. Do you think they sing at night, too, Shadow?"_

_―"The professor said that birds only sing at night when city streetlights disrupt their circadian rhythm. It is often believed that they confuse the sodium lamps with the sun."_

_―"You really know everything there is to know about Earth, don't you, Shadow?"_

The hoods of Shadow's eyes lifted wistfully. _'..._ _Maria.'_ His fingers dangled open, trembling from tip to base. _'I don't know anything anymore.'_  What he did know was that twelve year old Maria would've outshone the sun's yellow with her gold if she had been able to stand among the orchids with him. 

On the eve of Shadow's birth, he and Maria swore that they would spend their forevers in the meadows of Earth _._  To inhabit Earth was one of their dreams, if not the. Such a dream was the only world Shadow had ever known ― the only planet he had ever lived on ― and now, he wished it had never been. He was alive, no longer a hydrogen atom in the Milky Way, so what would this new life be like if he were to walk back into his childhood world of innocence now?

Could he _relive_ that life in this one? Would such a pure and perfect universe let him back in after everything he has seen and done? 

 _'No.'_  Shadow sealed his eyes shut, giving the orchids and butterflies his cheek.  _'As it shouldn't.'_  He opened his eyes to let them travel across the charred fate lines in his palm.  _'Because these hands would only destroy it.'_

  ― _ **FFFZZZZ**_ ―   _  
_

"Hm?!" Something black darted past Shadow's ear, snapping him into a battle stance. "What _was_ that thing?!"

The speck whizzed all around him ― left, right, up, down, backwards, forwards ― he couldn't keep up. It circled and circled and circled him until it had him flailing to protect himself from its attacks, but his enthusiasm flung him into an entirely different ambush.

― _ **SPLASH**_ ―

Shadow growled with pondwater up to his wrists and ankles. Drenched in humiliation, he squinted at his dominator with one cantankerous eye. The tiny blur hovered in front of him, zipping left and right with an innocent blink.

...It was a god damn hummingbird.

"... _Tch_." Shadow closed his eyes and rubbed between his ears. " _Just_  what I needed. More _pests_..."

* * *

Inside the cabin, Amy Rose was finally coming to. She yawned as she stretched her arms with the laziness of a kitty cat. "Oh,  _boy,"_ she lilted. " _I_  can't believe how  _sore_  I am. Shad―..." Amy performed a double-take on the empty spot next to her. She gasped, sitting up with her palms on her cheeks. "Oh,  _no_! I've got to find  _Shadow_! He's probably―"

"Standing right before you."

Amy triple-blinked at her damsel, who was leaning against the open door way too coolly for his own good. "...Uhhh...Shadow?" Amy raised her finger before pointing it at him with the opposite hand still on her cheek. " _Why_  are you all wet?"

"Hmph." Refusing to open his eyes, Shadow dug his pinkie in his ear to fish out whatever Loch Ness Monster that might've been in it. "Some questions are better left _unasked_."

Amy pushed herself up and dusted off her shorts, folding her arms behind her back to crane into him. "Are  _you_  sure you didn't go take a bath in the  _ocean_  or something?" Her question was posed with a giggle in the grammar. "Not that I would  _blame_  you or anything for it, but..."

Shadow turned his head indifferently, eyebrow convulsing. "An unplanned dive into something more original seemed to suffice."

Amy's orbs sparkled with humor. "Ohh,  _I_  see." She closed an eyelid as she playfully echoed him, "An 'unplanned dive,'  _huh_?"

His glanced at her with his eyes ajar. "And may I ask just what is it that you find so  _amusing_?"

"Ohh, nothing!" Amy linked her fingers behind her back. She untied them to point one at her nose. "You're just responding to me more, that's all! But don't worry! _I_  think it's a good thing!"

Shadow found himself annoyed by the fact that he couldn't provide a better response than, "Hmph _._.."

Amy giggled behind her closed lips.

While she was enjoying their new dynamic, something else tugged at him. He named the perpetrator after he had his back to her, "What did you mean last night, when you said, 'it was all my fault?'"

Amy winced at the offended rumble he punctuated it with. She dropped her sad eyes onto her sandals and played with her fingers. Tidal tears were coming up again, but she bit them down.

Shadow glared at the jungle unblinkingly. "...Very well." He walked outdoors.

"What was that?" Amy looked up to make sure he hadn't actually left her. She was devastated to find that he had. "Shadow...?!" Familiar seisms of abandonment hit her heart as the  _clanking_ sound of his metal shoes got tinier and tinier. "H...Hey! Don't go!" Her hand implored his back to return to her. "Come on, Shadow!"

Shadow was already a dot.

Amy disguised her devastation with flaring anger. "Oooh, I  _hate_  being left behind!―Shadow!" She chased after him in a knock-kneed sprint. "Wait for ME, Shadow!"

"I would advise you to stay right where you are," he recommended from afar.

"No  _way_!" Amy clapped back. "What're you, insane?!"

"It'll be safer for you here." Shadow's tone was mild in temperature. There wasn't even a hint of fieriness, just his cool sense of composure.

"We're  _supposed_  to be looking for a way out  _together,_ remember?" Amy mentioned, not nearly as cool-headed as her clearly ungrateful "maiden."

To her, Shadow's stride was infuriatingly graceful and smooth, like he ruled the very earth he walked on without needing to repay it for saving him. His elbows would reach the level of his waist as his arms swayed with purpose instead of Sonic's leisure, milking the superiority complex. "It is best that I find one of the seven Chaos Emeralds on my own. Professor Gerald once said that the Mystic Ruins was the home of the Master Emerald. If so, then one or all of the master's servers would naturally return to their original location after separating in space. That is, unless that pathetic  _military_  has confiscated them  _first,_ which would call for an entirely _different_ quest much sooner than what is necessary."

The way Shadow's voice darkened gave Amy a little tremor. It was horribly easy to picture him bathing the windows of a military base in blood. She didn't want to see that ― neither the red windows nor the bloodthirsty Shadow ― because  _this_  Shadow wouldn't do that.  _This_  Shadow was supposed to be  _Maria's_  Shadow, right? The Shadow who fought for love, not destruction. 

"G.U.N. doesn't have any Chaos Emeralds," Amy testified. "Not even Dr. Eggman has one! We've all been looking for them ever since the Biolizard split them up!"

Satisfaction dripped from Shadow's reply, "Then my search will begin here."

"But―...!" _'But what?'_  Amy reconsidered their prospects. Finding the end of the jungle's maze was ideal, but finding the Chaos Emerald would allow them to teleport anywhere. Since Shadow owed her, she could probably convince him to help her find Sonic in one of the  _Sonic spots_  she had mapped out. 

"If  _that's_  how things are," Amy crooned, enlightened by her new point of view, "then why not let _me_  help you? I may not have a map, but I can point out the hot spots when they turn up! Maybe I can even check the Chao Garden while you look around the jungle!"

Shadow's muzzle turned towards his shoulder, but his eyes didn't turn towards her. "Can you recall where that is?"

"You  _bet_!" Amy made fists with her hands  and nodded enthusiastically. "Like an elephant!" she forswore, not remembering a thing.

"And is the path to the Chao Garden safe?"

"Of course it is! There's nothing in the Mystic Ruins that I haven't handled before! You're on  _my_  turf, remember? And the first step to finding an emerald together is slowing  _down_ for one of your teammates!"

To her surprise, Shadow slowed down. He waited for her to catch up to him with his arms crossed, face blank, and shoulder turned towards her direction.

By the time Amy reached his side, she was already out of breath. "You...sure are...a fast walker, aren't cha?" She stood up straight after regaining her energy. "Whew!  _That_  was an exercise."

"We don't have much time," he pressed the matter at hand. "We need to find that Chaos Emerald before the sun sets."

Amy nodded. "Right!"

Shadow nodded back, unfolding his arms. The two hedgehogs parted ways in a glade. Untrue to her word, Amy's sandals came upon the Mystic Temple's pasture instead of the Chao Garden's trolley tracks. What drew her curiosity was a yawning underpass that looked like it had been tunneled into the temple by a giant serpent, but the more likely culprits were explosives left by crooked treasure hunters. Amy couldn't deny that if she was a Chaos Emerald, she would definitely take shelter in the Mystic Temple. With this in mind, she primed herself for an adventure.

Meanwhile, Shadow was investigating the Lost World, completely unaware of Amy's expedition in the same shrine. His eyes walked across ancient hieroglyphics of Chaos Emeralds on an aquatic room's limestone walls. The eroded warriors holding them resembled the red echidna in Sonic's circle, but their embossed faces weren't the only relics that lit the dark hallways of his memory.

"This place feels... _familiar_  to me somehow..." Shadow touched his forehead with his fingertips to shake off his Déjà vu, reopening his eyes drowsily. "But how can that be  _possible._..?"

"AAAAaaaaAAAHHHH!"

Shadow whipped around with his feet apart and hands clenched, glaring at the adit behind him.

"SONIC!"

Anxiety choked the black hedgehog. " _Amy_..." He bolted into the tunnel without a rocket boost from his air shoes, which compelled his concerns to bend towards the defunct jets. "What?!"

" _Sonic_ , I  _need_  you! PLEASE!"

Shadow's head came up. His pupils dilated.  _Fire._  The hedgehog broke his run with the sides of his heels. A turret of flames blocked him from going further. 

Up ahead shivered Amy, who looked petrified as she calculated her slim chances at dodging the moving pillars and firetraps that ringed her. The back of her sandals were singed to the heels, indicating her run-in with the inferno.

When the fire before Shadow was finally sealed away by the trap door in the floor, he thundered, " _Hurry_!"

Amy's head wounded back to the voice, reuniting her eyes with Shadow's. Flecks of hope illuminated them. "Shadow!"

He offered his calloused palm, but she was too timid to take it. " _Now!_ " he roared, bringing her nearer to tears. "Before it returns!" He shook his hand at her.

Amy realized that he was talking about the firetrap. She closed her eyes and threw her entire body at him, heel just missing the geyser of flames that shot up behind her.

Shadow caught her. " _Argh_ ―!" He shrank in height from the pressure that her weight was putting on his hamstrings.

Amy squalled, "Shadow―" 

"I'm  _fine,_ " he snapped. Shadow's calves shook like tea kettles due to the heat boiling in them. He used the resilience firing up and down his thighs to unbend his legs with a grunt.

"Sh-Shadow―"

"Just  _hang on_."

Amy's surroundings spiraled into a kaleidoscope of colors before she could blink. The striped hedgehog had the velocity of a Starstreak missile ― veering left and swerving right, yanking her through the universe and into a world that Sonic only saw. Shadow was both so out of control and entirely in it that gravity seemed to kneel at his feet, and somewhere between it all, a sensation that had strictly been affiliated with Sonic began to throb in her tummy. As the vantage point became a prism, Shadow launched straight for an oculus of light that was too bright for Amy to look at, so she covered her face with his throat. The heat from the radiation melted away after motion came to a standstill, but Amy kept her eyes behind her hands.

"You're safe now," Shadow monotonously said.

Amy's hands opened like doors. She blinked at her knees. "...Huh...?" The trembling girl looked around at the flooded chamber they were in before looking up at the hedgehog who had saved her. "Where are we now, Shadow?"

Shadow looked at the torches. "I'm not sure." He impassively reciprocated Amy's gaze. "Are you hurt?"

Amy looked over her thigh and touched her heel, lamenting, "My sandals...! Ooh, those were my favorite ones, too! It looks like they got caught on fire a little..." Regret spilled from her revelation, but then the spill thickened into a flood of explanations, "I got trapped in that minefield back there because I thought I saw something that looked like the Chaos Emerald, see, but then it turned out to be a quartz crystal instead, so I―...W-woah!  _Watch_  it!"

Shadow placed her tingling feet on the floor. "We don't have time for misapprehensions," he curtly pointed out, showing his annoyance in both his face and his voice. His breathless speaking style came off as unusual to her until she remembered that his body had almost gone limp thanks to her blunder.

" _I'm_  sorry," she offered. "You got hurt because of me, didn't you?" Even though he had put her down, Amy's hand stayed on his shoulder to emphasize her remorse.

Shadow simultaneously looked and pulled away. "You shouldn't even be here in the first place." His glare met her gawk. "What happened to the Chao Garden?"

Amy had a change of heart. "Well, excuse  _me_  for just trying to help!" She crossed her arms and tossed her head away. "I found  _this_  place  _first_  and thought it would be a good idea to check it out! I was only looking for the Chaos Emerald like you asked me to, but you can't even appreciate my efforts!"

"Hmph." With the austerity of a soldier, Shadow walked past her like she hadn't sassed him at all. "I can't get a pulse in this place, so to continue our search here would be pointless."

Her cheekiness went away. "A pulse...?" She followed Shadow with a blink. "Like, a heartbeat?" Amy halted in her footsteps after he halted in his. "Can you actually  _feel_  the Chaos Emeralds, Shadow?"

Shadow angled his head to stare at what Amy thought was an ordinary mural. "Amy."

The seriousness in his call made her shut up. Her words wormed out at the last minute, "What is it now...?"

He looked back at her intensely. His red eye seemed to flicker with flames from some unexplained urgency. "I want you to follow me from here on out, and I  _don't_  want you running off without my permission. Have I made myself clear?"

"... _Your_ permission?" Amy drawled, gobsmacked. "What am I, a baby? I don't need anyone's permission to do anything at all!"

"I'm growing tired of this. We're wasting more  _time_." Shadow headed for the wall before she could finish fussing at him. The dead-end slid sideways to uncover a secret passage.

Instead of commenting on the neat escape hatch, Amy commented on his attitude, "What's  _with_  you all of a sudden? I'm not some three year old who needs to be babysat because she can't behave, you know."

"Hmph." Shadow set foot in the cavern. "I beg to differ." His dig had a microminiature smirk in it.

"Don't let my cute looks fool you!" Amy loped up to his side, blending in with the shadows. "I can pack a reeeaaal punch when duty calls!" 

"There isn't any doubt in my mind."

"There better not be!" 

Their voices grew smaller the further they walked. Because the unorthodox team was at the mercy of Shadow's stamina, they followed the gravel in the dark at an unhurried pace. Shadow's heavy breathing worried Amy along the way, but he deflected her questions every time by indirectly making her seem like the liability. 

"Stay close to me," he would remind her, despite how she was stronger than him. 

Amy had to resist the urge to grab onto his tail for guidance. "Stay close to  _me_  so that I can actually  _see_  you."

In the timeliest manner possible, the sun hailed them from the end of the underpass.

Amy jogged outside to cherish the fresh air. "Awright!" The fourteen year old bounced up and down. "We made it!" She hugged her hands together and twirled around to the (physically) fifteen year old hedgehog, batting her eyelashes at him. "Good work, Shadow!"

He nodded in acceptance of her compliment, but was too busy navel-gazing to absorb her praise.

Amy walked up to Shadow, ducking a little to see his hanging face. "Hey, are you  _okay_? How about we go looking for that Chao Garden  _together_  this time? You could rest there if you're feeling run down and whatnot. What'd you say?" She was cooing to him like he was a child she had to look after, because it was in her nature to coddle dark knights of his sort.  

The navel-gazer uncrossed his arms. "Resting is not an option." He turned his head, a habitual dodge that kept her from seeing too much, which made Amy wonder if he was upset with her again. "I can't stay in this condition for much longer. There are too many hazards in the offing. That is why I need to use the daylight _wisely_."

Despite how much he avoided saying the word "threat" in clear English, it occurred to Amy that Shadow was telling her that he felt defenseless without a Chaos Emerald. "Oh, I see...that _is_  serious." She looked at the clouds. "Hmmm...and I can't dowse, because I don't have my rods with me. Huh."

Amy dropped her fist into her palm. " _I_  know! Why don't we do this? Knuckles said that the Chao here have a natural affiliation with the Chaos Emeralds, so they're always close by. If we go to their garden and find one, you can relax a little. It's always been a safe place, as far as I remember. How does that sound?"

"..." Shadow's head nodded at the ground after what felt like years. He looked back to share his eyes with her. "I suppose that it sounds better than nothing, given the circumstances."

Amy's pep came back. "Then what are we waiting for? Let's get this show on the road! I'll lead the way, of course!"

"Be my guest."

"My~  _pleasure_!"

With that, the adolescents went on their way. Amy descried Shadow's curiosity as his eyes followed the animals in the canopies. At times, he would pause and block her from walking onward as families of civets, anteaters, or red squirrels trotted by, presumably thinking that he needed to protect her from them. Amy showed Shadow that everything was fine by kneeling down to beckon a squirrel to climb into her palms. She lifted the nut gnawer to her face and rubbed snouts with him.

Shadow watched their intimacy unfold with surprise. Amy released the tiny squirrel into a tree, giving him room to inquire her about her affinity with nature.

She was happy to answer with a simple, "I've always gotten along with animals! I even saved Birdie from Eggman once! That's what I called him ― the little birdie I saved, that is. And Gamma ― he was Dr. Eggman's robot, but I convinced him to free himself. No one should have to live under anyone else's control,  _especially_  not someone like Dr. Eggman's. We should all be free to choose our own fate, wouldn't you say?"

Shadow eyed her. "You seem to have a way with those whom are different from your kind..."

Amy grew sunnier at the thought. "I kinda do, don't I?" She looked up as she rested her fingertip on her chin. "I really miss the both of them, though. They really helped me grow." She smiled, opening her arms to the sky like a flower blooming. "I hope they're living freely without a  _care_  in the world! I'll bet Birdie is on some big adventure as we speak!"

"Hm...―Hm?" Shadow's gaze discovered the [macaws](http://southwickszoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/scarlet-macaw.jpg) in the tree above them. The rainbow parrots cocked their eyes at him as they squawked. "They have a  _problem_ , do they?" he figured, amused.

"I  _think_  what they're trying to say to us is, 'Hello,'" Amy opined. She put her hands up to the corners of her mouth and shouted, "Hello up there! How are you today? That storm was pretty dreadful, wasn't it? I hope all of you made it out okay!"

Shadow appeared to take a very keen interest in her conversation with them, even uncrossing his arms to let them hang open, but Amy couldn't read his mind. It was obviously cottoned with intense thoughts, maybe even troubled ones, yet Amy liked to think the opposite. Filling in the blanks on her own, Amy beamed at the idea of a clueless, almost innocent Shadow the Hedgehog seeing the world through  _her_  eyes for the very first time. 

"Amy." That serious voice was calling her again.

"Hm?" 

"We have to keep moving."

She saluted him. "Aie, aie, Captain Shadow!"

"... _Don't_ call me that."

"Why not?"

"Because I resent it."

"No need to take it to heart. I was just trying to lighten you up a little!" 

"The only thing that will "lighten me up" is finding that Chaos Emerald."

"Then in that case, say no more!"

They spent the spare hours of their tour looking for the trolley that would lift them out of the jungle's maze, which became pretty hopeless over time. Amy didn't let the morass of drawbacks put a dent in her current mood, though. Shadow opened an eye at her as she skipped in front of him, bobbing her head to some free-styled lyrics:

_"I got out my map and chose a place where I wanted to go. I know that your lucky color is that cool shade of blue. I guess I'm soooo~ easy to understand. I just do, whatever, comes to me NAT-urally~!"_

"You do realize that there is nothing to be happy about in this situation, don't you?"

"Huh?" Amy blinked over her shoulder with a finger on her lip.

"Yet somehow you still manage to be in spite of that fact," Shadow noted. 

Amy pouted with one cheek puffed up. "That's just how I am, for your information!" She shut her eyes and puffed her chest out, placing her wrists on her hips as she announced, "I'm just a cheerful, cute girl who enjoys life!" The pink hedgehog marched ahead and sang louder in rebellion.

 _'…Enjoys life…'_  Shadow rewound the quote in his head again and again until it was ingrained in his brain. Even then, he didn't understand the definition, being unable to relate to the activity himself, so he  _hmphed_  to redeem his pride.

_**―v-V-v―** _

"Mmph." Alarm charged Shadow's sixth sense like a buckshot passing through his ears. He threw his arm out in front of Amy.

Amy stopped to blink down at Shadow's elbow before double-checking his face for any clues as to what was happening. "Shadow...?"

"There's danger here," he warned, locked on the thickets that shivered twenty feet ahead of them.

The second after his caveat was accompanied by the sound of metal feet making their way towards the footpath in the distance.

Amy gasped as the wanderer appeared. Her hand jumped up to her mouth before being pulled down by her realization. "One of Dr. Eggman's  _robots_!"

"The doctor's  _base_  must be nearby, _"_ Shadow calculated.

Amy moaned, "Not _again_!" She paused in mid-complaint after getting a better look at the robot. "Hold _on_ a minute! Is that...?"

His body shape took after an egg, and his legs copied a chicken's walk. The middle torso, which carried one glinting headlight, was white while every other part of his frame blared red.

"But it  _can't_ be!" Amy disclaimed, shaking her head. She blinked widely at the bot to see if the image had changed, but it hadn't. "What's  _he_ doing here?!"

The robot decelerated to stand in the heart of the footpath. He was clueless to their presence as far as Amy could tell, but the reason revealed itself when he started careening like a sunken boat. His machine gun dug into the earth to break his fall. Amy looked down and saw blue sparks of electricity climbing up the robot's left thigh. The poor soul folded his legs under his body until it looked like a roller backpack, surrendering to his injuries.

Rather than seeing a poor thing that had no will to go on, all Shadow saw was an opportunity. " _I'll_  take care of _this_ while  _you_  make a  _run_  for it," he ordered.

"No, wait! _Please_ don't hurt Mr. Robot! Shadow, _stop_ ―!" Amy's hand jumped out to grab Shadow's shoulder, but her fingers only snatched air. "SHADOW!"

Charging like a rhino, Shadow somersaulted into a ball, revved up momentum, and then rocketed off, shredding through ferns as he spin-dashed towards the robot. The bot rotated his torso so that he could face his new threat. Alerted, he grabbed the bottom of its machine gun and fired aimlessly; one missile managed to explode in front of Shadow, forcing him to fly back. Amy didn't have time to shout because the other missiles were narrowly missing her shoulders.

Screaming, the pink hedgehog ducked as the trees around her smashed the ferns beside her. Smoke plumed from the demolition, getting into her lungs and squeezing them tight. 

Shadow landed on his knee and palm. "Amy...?!" He couldn't see her, but he could hear her coughing. "Amy―!" Another missile dynamited the ground under him, throwing him across the jungle. 

"Guh!" Shadow cartwheeled away from the fuming crater to bury his heels into the dirt. His fingers clawed up the soil until his body skidded to a halt. Shaking at the ankles, Shadow raised his head and growled at the robot, "I've  _had it_  with you and your  _games_! You're  _through_!"

"Enemy__identified." A laser beam parked on Shadow's forehead. "Enemy__identified. You__are__unnatural to the Earth. You__do not__belong."

Shadow stood tall and strong, fearlessly wearing the laser's red dot. "I am the ultimate lifeform, _"_ ―he ran at the robot― _"_ and let me be the last thing that you ever _see_!"  

The smoke clouding Amy's body cleared, adding red and pink colors to her silhouette. She unwrapped her arms to bring her fists down to her sides and sob, "Both of you,  _stop_  it! Stop it right NOW!"

The gunner robot aimed his weapon at Shadow's cranium just as electrical sparks covered the barrel, destroying its function. Shadow smirked in early victory before Amy's appearance wiped it off. He stopped short in his tracks, taking sharp breaths. The girl was standing in front of the enemy with arms out and tears under her eyes. 

Too overheated to question her, Shadow  _told_  her, "Out of my  _way_ _,_ Amy!" He opened his palm to squeeze his fingers into a shaking fist that implied strangulation.  _"_ This is my chance to destroy that pathetic creature once and for  _all_ ―"

" ** _N_** ** _o_**!"

Shadow's pupils contracted. 

"Don't you see?! He's already  _hurt_ ―"

"You have feelings for something that you know nothing about," Shadow riposted. "Now I won't ask you again." He flung the arm of his balled hand. "Stand  _ **aside**_ ―"

"He's my  _friend,_ **Gamma**!"


End file.
